Documenting my Camino [el 16 de mayo]

by Sarah Luna

While cleaning out my desk, I found the blue Liderpapel quadrille journal I kept while walking the Camino de Santiago. I couldn’t possibly throw that away without transcribing it here first.

In the posts that follow, I will transcribe my words exactly (maybe only changing a name or two) with little or no attempt to correct grammar mistakes.

Please understand that this was written with only a basic understanding of Spanish (I know just enough grammar to mess myself up 😉 ) with no access to a dictionary and often after walking for several hours.

It is also worth mentioning that this was my first time being immersed in a different culture. Some of the things I say don’t make sense: some of the qualitative descriptions I give are inaccurate while some of the quantitative ones are simply wrong. I am not going to try to correct these. The confusion was a very real part of my experience.

Additionally, the burden of translation falls on you. 🙂

Prologue: I decided to walk the Camino de Santiago with a group of A&M students in the summer of 2007. We flew from Houston to New York to Madrid to Pamplona.